Trivia

Akuma

"Akuma'", the name of the evil warlord in Karateka (and many other games featuring a Japanese bad guy), is a Japanese word that roughly means 'devil'.

Akuma Castle

The Akuma Castle that appears at the beginning, seems to be inspired by the "Himeji Castle" that really exists in Japan, near Kyoto. Search on Google or Altavista Image Search for "Himeji Castle" and you'll find pictures of the real castle.

Apple II version

The Apple II version of Karateka came on one single-sided floppy disk. However, by booting Karateka up on the opposite side (Side Two) - the game would still load, but now the game was upside down. A visual gag on the part of someone at Brøderbund most likely.

Atari 7800 version

For the Atari 7800 version of Karateka, the end label on the cartridge was unusual in that it featured square corners instead of the usual rounded corners. This was one of the only (if not the only) games to do so.

Cliff

It is possible to fall off the edge of the cliff in the first scene if you back into it.

Engine

Text files

Most of Karateka on the PC is made of editable text files. You can modify the game by changing the coordinates in the language files.

Title

"Karateka" means a practitioner of karate.

Hidden Text

The Atari 7800 version contains a hidden message at hexadecimal address 0x079D, which reads "MOMMY AND ME ARE ONE". This refers to a 1985 study on subliminal messages by Lloyd Silverman and Joel Weinberger, in which a near-identical phrase was supposedly found to have a positive effect on subjects' self-motivation.